Auscultation is the act of listening to sounds within the body as a method of diagnosis. A stethoscope is an example of an auscultation device that is used in the medical field to listen to internal sounds in the human body, such as heart sounds, breathing (breath sounds), intestinal noises, blood flow through the arteries and veins, and externally produced sounds, such as percussion. Acoustic stethoscopes operate on the transmission of sound from a headpiece, via air filled tubes, to the listener's ears. The headpiece may include a diaphragm that can be placed against a human body for sensing sound. These body sounds then cause the diaphragm to vibrate, in turn creating acoustic pressure waves that travel up the hollow tubes to the listener's ears.
Forming a diagnosis of a patient using an auscultation device such as a stethoscope requires training in proper placement of the headpiece, detecting bodily sounds, and identifying abnormalities as compared to normal body sounds. Often this type of training takes advantage of simulated, or standardized, patients such as mannequins with recorded sounds being presented to the student. Other times, real human patients presenting with certain known ailments are used to train students to detect and identify body sounds in a real-time “live” environment.
In situations where a student is being trained using simulated sounds and patients, it is beneficial to use a stethoscope training aid that can recreate these simulated sounds through the earpiece of the stethoscope so the student can experience these sounds in as close to a natural condition as possible. One such device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,645,141 to Lecat, the entire disclosure of which is fully incorporated herein by reference.
In live environments, students typically use a standard practice stethoscope to detect and identify body sounds, however, when teaching in groups, this type of environment tends to result in differing exposure between students. For example, student A may hear a body sound that is slightly different than what student B hears based on differences in placement of the stethoscope headpiece to changes in the sounds the human body makes at different times. This problem is compounded as the size of the student group increases. What is needed is a tool that allows for a blending of the live and simulated environments wherein the experience can be shared among multiple students simultaneously in order to standardize the learning experience.